


you're engraved here in my bones

by afire



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, also john keats for holding my hand through it all, canon divergent fix-it we're two birds one stoning this, many thanks to that tim kreider article for holding my hand at the end there, the moral of the story is that love wins always and all the time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28332651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afire/pseuds/afire
Summary: The lake will have its lady, and Bly will have its ghost.(or: a happy ending)
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 12
Kudos: 109





	you're engraved here in my bones

_A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:_  
_Its loveliness increases; it will never_  
_Pass into nothingness; but still will keep_  
_A bower quiet for us, and a sleep_  
_Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing._

_— **Endymion** , John Keats_

* * *

It’s been like this for a while now.

She’d tried to ignore it, that frightful emptiness, the way her bones seem to have hollowed themselves out.

_Not yet. Please. Just one more day._

Always just one more day.

She’d pushed it back, as best she could, but that’s the thing about gravity wells. There’s no escape, not really, and all she’s done is delay the inevitable.

The lake will have its lady, and Bly will have its ghost.

There is no other way for this story to end.

Except-

“You’re still here.”

Jamie is holding on. 

She doesn’t have to, but she’s holding on, and sometimes it feels like she’s the only reason why Dani hasn’t completely faded away.

They’re tethered to each other, for better or for worse. They’re tethered to each other, and it is love. 

It is love, so Dani knows that there will come a time where she has to let go.

Because if the lake will have her, if it has to have her, it cannot take anyone else. She will not let it take anyone else.

She will not let it take Jamie.

“What if ... I’m here sitting next to you, but I’m just really her?”

_How many more days until my last?_

“You’re not,” Jamie says, steadfast in her determination, always the solid ground that Dani needs, the one she returns to whenever it feels like she’s in danger of floating away. “You’re not. And do you want to know why?”

It’s a rhetorical question, but Dani nods anyway, movements shaky and erratic. Jamie presses closer, steadying her.

“Because I’m here, too.” She takes Dani’s hand, the one that’s still drifting through the full bathtub, holds it between both of her own. “And I know you, Poppins. I remember you. So as long as I’m here, you could never be her.”

Dani takes a shuddering breath. “Promise?” she asks, voice lilting upwards, so reminiscent of the way she’d asked that exact same thing, all those nights ago.

_One day at a time._

Jamie kisses her trembling fingers.

“Promise.”

**&.**

Dani stops looking.

It becomes obvious, once she does, how much of it she’d been doing before. Some twisted, morbid sense of curiosity, propelling her toward anything that might hold her reflection. Unconscious, perhaps, but all the same.

It had been different, with Eddie. Not better, certainly. Just different. 

Too many of those cold, lonely months had been spent flinching away from her own image. Mirrors, glass windows, polished tabletops. Cameras, even. 

Dani doesn’t have any pictures from that time, too afraid of looking at a photo and seeing more than just herself.

Bly had taken Eddie, she’d lost him to the forest and the flames, but something else now sits in his place. Someone else. Someone, in all probability, much worse.

Fair’s fair, she supposes. One ghost for another.

Sometimes, when moments start to last longer than they should, Dani hears her mother’s voice, shrill and tinny over the old, beat-up payphone.

_You can’t keep running away._

Fitting, then, that all this is because she’d refused to. Because, when presented with the option to save herself, to turn around, she’d run into the lake, into the terror, and not away from it.

Dani thinks she’s had quite enough of running, thank you very much. She’s not even that good at it.

The world has always spun too quickly for her liking, unsteady beneath the soles of her feet, leaving her dizzy and confused, fighting to keep up.

She’d been lonely so long when she got to Bly that it’d taken her by surprise, the feeling of being protected, of being looked after.

Hannah and Owen, even Flora and Miles. They’d tried their absolute best, and, despite everything else, Dani doesn’t remember being quite so loved as she’d been in that manor.

Barring, of course, any moment she spends with Jamie. Those are special. Especially since it’s a bit impossible to ruminate in her own misgivings when Jamie’s around.

“Chin up, Poppins! I’ve put the kettle on, we can make some of that terrible coffee you got the other day.”

“It’s not terrible! It’s French!”

“Like I said.”

Dani laughs, and when she reaches into the drying rack for their mugs, doesn’t let her gaze linger on the shine of the overturned metal bowl that sits behind them.

Far be it from her to dismiss the power of old adages.

_Out of sight, out of mind._

Maybe, just maybe, if she stops looking, the Lady will stop looking back.

**&.**

“Saved you a purple one,” Jamie says, gesturing toward the front counter with one of her gloved hands. “You like them.”

Dani, just barely in the shop, box of pastries still hugged to her chest, doesn’t even try to resist the smile that stretches, wide and unbidden, across her face.

Thirteen years between them. Thirteen years of listening, and learning, and growing. Thirteen years, and still, every day, Jamie finds new ways to love her.

There have certainly been other nights.

The most recent development between them has been Jamie's newfound penchant for making comments about Dani’s interests, her habits, always in passing, never lingering too long.

It doesn’t seem deliberate, but Dani knows her wife, has known Jamie long enough to understand that, on some level, everything is deliberate.

She hadn’t recognised it at first, hadn’t known where to look, how to listen, but she’d gotten there in the end.

Jamie’s love is slow-moving devotion, sure and steady, unyielding and unending. Quiet, perhaps, in many ways, but never soft.

_Do you want company? While you wait for your beast in the jungle. Do you want company?_

Dani had never known that it could be a choice, that she could decide, how and when she wants to be loved. She hadn’t known that she could refuse it altogether, if it isn’t the kind of love she understands.

No one had ever asked.

The truth is, she’s never been Danielle, not really. Always just Dani, even if only to herself.

It’s possible, she thinks, to love someone completely, and still not love them right.

“What’ve you got there?” Jamie’s abandoned the gardening gloves in favour of coaxing the box out of Dani’s hands. “Something sweet, I hope.”

Dani lets it go without complaint, more interested in the heliotrope on the counter. “Hm? Oh, yeah.” When she turns back around, flower between her fingers, Jamie’s already halfway through what looks to be a chocolate danish. “Good?” Dani asks, trying her best to swallow a laugh.

Jamie’s got powdered sugar on her nose, and she swipes at it with the back of her hand as she nods. “Here, try it.” She stretches out, overestimates the distance between them and almost smashes the pastry right into Dani’s face.

Dani leans back, takes a careful bite. “Mm, yeah.” She licks her lips, doesn’t miss the way Jamie’s eyes follow the motion. “It’s good.”

“Not as good as the custard ones, probably.” Jamie pops the rest of the danish into her mouth, then closes the box. “Don’t worry, Poppins, won’t touch those. S’all yours.”

The pastries are back in Dani’s hands before she even fully registers their movement, and by the time she realises what’s happened, Jamie’s already at the other end of the shop, pulling her gloves back on.

Dani sets the box on the counter, leaning back against it as she glances down at the heliotrope still in her hands.

On good days, she won’t remember that someone else’s anguish and rage sits in her chest, won’t even think about it, too distracted by her own happiness, her own love. On bad days, she won’t forget.

It might be Jamie’s silly little comments, it might not, but Dani hasn’t had very many bad days lately, just a whole slew of good ones.

It seems to her, if at all possible, that she’s waking up each morning now more herself than ever before. Like all the pieces of her that have been lost, that have been tucked away, are slowly coming home to roost, blooming anew beneath her skin.

Here, in this shop, in this little corner of the world that has opened to her like a warm embrace, Dani clutches the evidence of Jamie’s love for her between steady hands, takes a long, slow breath, and marvels at the way she has never felt more alive.

**&.**

When she startles into wakefulness, jolting upright, breath catching at the back of her throat, the first thing Dani does is panic.

Immediately, she looks down at her hands, and the shot of relief that sinks through her when she finds them empty is so palpable that she has to take a second to breathe through it.

An overreaction, maybe, but Dani thinks she’s allowed this much. There have been too many restless nights, too many moments of waking, breathless and terrified, shakily reaching for the other side of the bed, if only to make sure that Jamie is still there, still breathing, that Dani hasn’t, in her sleep, done something she could never forgive herself for.

So when she’s jerked into consciousness, heart thudding like a jackhammer behind her ribs, Dani’s first instinct is to fling an arm out, searching for Jamie in the dark.

The movement is, perhaps, more erratic than she’d intended it to be, and when her fingers hit something warm, the resulting collision is just violent enough that Jamie wakes too, punching out a surprised breath as she grabs hold of Dani’s hand.

“Poppins? What’s wrong? You alright?” Jamie’s voice is low and rough, husky around the edges, the way it always is when she’s still half-asleep but trying very hard to be present. “Bad dream?”

Dani holds tight to Jamie’s hand, tries her best to draw every ounce of her focus to that one, singular point of contact. Jamie sits up, leans in, and the familiar warmth of her concern washes over Dani like a wish.

To speak nothing of the ghosts that have been snatching at her ankles, biting at her heels, for longer than any one creature should chase another, Dani has discovered that she doesn’t mind so much having someone else nestled against her bones.

Love is its own haunted house, and there lives within Dani an ardent desire to be the body, the beating heart, that Jamie can call home.

_They’re opposites, really. Love and ownership._

“Dani?” 

“I’m fine. I’m-” Dani looks up, meets Jamie’s worried gaze, and the rest of her sentence collapses in on itself.

Most of the time, Dani doesn’t remember her dreams. A blessing, really, after everything. Most of the time, she only knows she’s had a nightmare if she wakes to shaky hands, a pounding heart.

Tonight, her hands are still, safe in Jamie’s own, but her heart is racing, double-time swing behind her ribs, and Dani remembers.

Not a bad dream. Not a bad dream at all.

“Jamie.”

“Right here, Poppins. You okay?”

Dani grins. “Yeah,” she says. “Perfect.” Then she tilts forward, steals a kiss, lightning-quick. “I love you.”

_I’m so glad you stayed._

For a moment, Jamie just stares at her, clearly still processing, then she smiles, crooked and gorgeous. “Love you, too.”

And for now, for the rest of their lives, for whatever comes next, that’s enough.

**&.**

Despite having dedicated several years of her life to the pursuit of proving the contrary, Dani has never been very good at fulfilling expectations.

She’d played Atlas for them, as long as she could, but none of it has ever been hers to bear.

There are other worlds, more befitting of her shoulders, better worlds. Her love for Jamie, for their life together.

_That’s enough for me, if it’s enough for you._

She cannot carry everything, but she can carry this.

Sometimes, though, sometimes Jamie’s the one who has to do the heavy-lifting.

“Alright, Poppins. Ran out of the purple halfway through and had to make do with blue, hope that’s okay.”

She holds up the sweater, Dani’s favourite, the one she’d accidentally torn a hole into the other day tidying up the shop, and gives it a little shake.

Jamie’s still got the needle between her teeth, leftover thread tucked behind her ear, and Dani can’t help but think she looks oddly charming like that, brows furrowed in concentration as she inspects her handiwork.

“Well, at least it matches your-”

Dani, leaning forward in her seat in an attempt to actually locate the patched-up hole—a testament to Jamie’s skill, really—glances up at the hastily stifled sentence.

“Hm?”

Jamie looks at her for a long moment, then she folds the sweater neatly, places it on the couch next to Dani, slides the needle back into the sewing kit. Slowly, carefully, she drops to her knees on the rug, skims gentle fingers along the underside of Dani’s jaw, holding her in place so she can’t look away.

Not that Dani would ever want to.

“Thought it might just be my mind playing tricks on me,” Jamie says. “Didn’t want to mention it, thought you would definitely notice first if it were true.”

“What?”

“Your eyes, Poppins. They’re blue again. Both of them.”

Almost without meaning to, Dani reaches to hold the left side of her face, as if she’ll be able to feel the difference.

“How ... how long?”

Jamie’s hands fall away, though they don’t stray far, landing cradled in Dani’s lap. “Couple weeks, maybe more.” Her gaze cuts to the side, but only for a second. “Wanted to say something, really. But I didn’t know if it was just my own wishful thinking.” She leans forward, holds Dani’s gaze like there is nothing more precious, nothing more divine. “Didn’t think it was fair to get anyone’s hopes up, y’know? Couldn’t will it to be, however much I wanted to.”

_You see, I’m not sick of you. At all. I’m actually pretty in love with you, it turns out._

“I think,” Dani says, and she lets her hand fall, slots it between both of Jamie’s own, “I think you did.”

For the longest time—most of her life, if she’s being honest with herself, save for those early childhood years—Dani had felt, somehow, a little less than everything else around her. Less there, less real. Like she’s alive, and she exists, but not all the way.

Bly had taken that feeling too, and she has to be grateful for that. Because she has never been Danielle, never will be, but Dani Clayton is real. Dani Clayton is there. Regardless of whoever else has forced their way in, Dani Clayton exists all the way. 

No one can take that from her. Not anymore. 

But, and this is something new, something she’s still learning, even now, sometimes people give. Sometimes it’s the giving that brings her there, that makes her real.

What an honour it is, to be loved into reality.

“She’s gone.” Dani closes her eyes, opens them, takes a deep breath and lets the air fill her lungs. “She’s gone, Jamie. I’m just me again.”

“You,” Jamie says, through the smile that’s bloomed across her face, sharp with gentle relief, “could never be ‘just’ anything.”

Life is for the living, and sometimes people give. 

Dani has never been more herself than when Jamie is looking at her.

“So, Poppins. I’ve got to ask.” Jamie plants her hands on Dani’s knees, pushes so that she’s up on her feet, hovering above the couch. “Do you still want the company?”

Dani laughs, feather-light, reaches to wind both arms around Jamie’s neck. When she tugs, her wife falls, and Dani moves to catch her.

“Always."

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Possession by Vivian, which was taken from my sad Dani/Jamie playlist, which I listened to at some points during my writing process.
> 
> You can find me [@softpluto](https://taylorswift.co.vu) on Tumblr if you'd like to chat! Any correspondence is encouraged, I love talking to y'all & hearing your thoughts.
> 
> It's been a while since I've said this, but let's go back to basics just this once. Catch you on the flipside!


End file.
